how to shoot rain falling on flowers

plloydie

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Hi i would like to try to shoot some flowers whilst it's raining or using a sprinkler, i would like to capture the rain drops as they fall to try to emphasis movement, any tips or advice would be welcome.

Thanks in advance


before the obvious question about whether the camera is waterproof i intend to shoot from under a large fishing brolly
 
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Hi,
If you want to freeze the movement of the raindrops you'll ideally want to use a flash, not sure what sort of camera you have but essentially I would recommend using the flash - probably using flash compensation to back of the light by a stop or so to keep things looking natural - let me know what you are using and I'll try to be more specific. Flash will also help you get a decent depth of field without long shutter speeds which will blur your flower - amazing how much the darn things move around over the course of a second or so!!

Pros often take the flower inside, thread a steel wire through them stem to keep it still and them use glycerol or similar to make water drops that are easier to photograph because they are quite viscous - I'm guessing you don't want to go that far ;-)

Hope this helps - the flash is the key!

Regards
Andrew
 
Ok, the SB600 let's you do +/- 3 stops of compensation if I remember rightly - 1 will at a guess give you something natural looking , full flash always looks a bit over bright to me at least on stuff like this.

The challenge is to freeze the movement - you rain drops will move the flower when they hit so a relatively fast shutter speed is needed - can't remember the nikon fastest shutter sync , it's probably 1/200 or so plus if you want the whole flower in focus I'd guess an aperture of f11 or maybe f16 with the macro lens would give you good results. Getting movement trails will work with slower shutter speeds a guess would be to start at about 1/2 second and play from there - you might need to back the flash off a little more for that - again a little trial and error will help you get a feel for it.

Trial and error will also be key for getting a drop hitting the flower, use a cable release if you have one and personally I would use single shot and try and time/judge the release with the drops, machine gunning away might work but I always seem to get better results with a more manual approach - but that's just my preference so don't take it as a rule.

Trying to think if I still have some similar shots I did a few years back in similar fashion, if I can find them I'll post them up here somewhere but by then I am sure you will have had chance to play.

Oh one last thing, I'm mostly a landscape photographer these days and whenever there is water around you can guarantee it will find your lens - so keep a lens cloth or two handy and keep an eye on the front of the lens - nothing worse than getting the perfect shot and then finding a dirty great water mark on it!! Been there done that...

Have fun
Andrew
 
Hi i would like to try to shoot some flowers whilst it's raining or using a sprinkler, i would like to capture the rain drops as they fall to try to emphasis movement, any tips or advice would be welcome.

Thanks in advance


before the obvious question about whether the camera is waterproof i intend to shoot from under a large fishing brolly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zu0I9d0cso&feature=related
Simples:)
 
:eek: Crikey - I think ole Bryan needs to sort out his hair style - seems to be still stuck in the 80's.... :coat: :exit:
 
:eek: Crikey - I think ole Bryan needs to sort out his hair style - seems to be still stuck in the 80's.... :coat: :exit:

Agree... I did wonder when the film was made... it was uploaded in 2009 so not that old...:D
 
Gavin Hoey http://www.youtube.com/user/PhotoGavin
Also check out Adorama TV and Learnmyshot.com. If you are able to pay a subscription then Mark Cleghorn's Photo Training4U or knucklehead Will Crocket's ShootSmarter.com

Karl Taylor has a mini learn photography course atm, if you can't find it I'll look up the link for you.

EDIT: Also google Photo answers videos for more stuff.
 
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